Many telephony protocols for use with data networks provide, in addition to the voice channel, a dedicated data channel. It is often possible, during a voice call, to pass data from one endpoint to the other over such a dedicated data channel, and such data can be used for call control or for providing information to a call member. The data channels predominantly use proprietary data formats which means that two users, involved in, for example, a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) call may be unable to share data in this way unless both are using the same client software. This is clearly disadvantageous given the increasing reliance on Internet telephony.
Organizations which are built around telephony interactions with users, such as contact centers employing agents to respond to customers and self-service contact centers, have generally sought to improve the automated aspects of their customer interface by providing more intelligent and intuitive voice-based services.
Indeed, the primary area of improvement of contact centers in recent years has been the development of automated speech recognition so that customers can traverse automated menus using voice commands rather than relying solely on the DTMF tones generated by key presses. However, voice-based services such as this are “one-dimensional” in the sense that the user can only listen to a particular segment and/or respond with a particular voice input at any given time. This can make the customer's experience very unrewarding, even with the best voice recognition.
For example, if a customer is seeking a quotation for marine insurance for a speedboat, a call placed to a general insurance company may give rise to a long search through the automated voice menus simply to discover whether or not marine insurance is provided. If asked to choose between “home insurance”, “vehicle insurance”, and “other insurance”, the customer may first pick “other insurance” and navigate through the sub-menus seeking something that might cover marine insurance. If unsuccessful, the customer might be tempted to determine if “vehicle insurance” is considered by the company to include marine insurance, involving another trawl through the menu structure.
All this can take considerable time before the customer finally realizes that the company does not in fact offer marine insurance. A self-service system of this type remains unsatisfactory in comparison to a human agent (who could be directly asked the relevant question) unless and until the voice recognition software is accompanied by an agent which can understand voice inputs and provide intelligent responses to them (i.e. inputs such as “I am looking for marine insurance for my speedboat. Do you provide this type of underwriting?”).
In contrast to such a self-service contact center application, the web page of the insurance company can sometimes be more useful and rewarding because the data format allows a multidimensional, richer view of the services provided by the company, from which the customer can quickly determine whether or not to pursue the enquiry seeking an insurance quotation from that company.
There is therefore an opportunity for providers of telephony-based automated applications to offer improved services which can alleviate some of the problems associated with traditional voice telephony and make their own offerings more attractive.